Games Gone Feral

An article has been making the rounds on video game blogs and email lists recently. It’s about recent research done by a man named Steven Franconeri concerning the human brains ability to track multiple moving objects at one time. The researchers found that the brain seems to top out at 8 objects, even if they moved very slowly, and that number dropped the faster the objects moved. Obviously this has implications for how we think about game design. When I read the article, I started thinking not only about how the research applies to games, but more importantly how it may not. I did a little thought experiment in my head, and for this experiment my test case was Robotron.

In Robotron, the player must be aware of more than 8 rapidly moving objects at a time in order to stay alive and succeed. So this seemingly contradicts the research. However, the experiment the people in the study were asked to perform was to maintain FOCUS on multiple objects at one time. If you try if for yourself, you will see a field of balls. Some of these balls flash to let you know you must focus on them, and then they move around for a period of time at some speed. Then the balls you were supposed to focus on turn red and you can see if you could track them. (more…)

After recovering from a trip to the Chicago office for a technical design summit, I finally managed to crack open Super Mario Galaxy and give it a whirl. Considering it is apparently proving out to be the greatest game of all time, my expectations were high.

I was an incredibly huge fan of Super Mario 64, which I put up as my favorite game of all time. That game was a pioneer in so many ways, and its gameplay still holds up quite well today. It had an extremely workable camera that was tuned for each area you went through, and along with its controls, they went unmatched for many years after its release. (Maybe Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, another favorite of mine, finally matched it?)

Of course I was waiting for this game because I would love another Mario 64. Unfortunately I went through this same anticipation five years ago for Super Mario Sunshine and was gravely disappointed. I ask around a lot about what was wrong with Sunshine and I get very vague answers. It had all the trappings of Mario 64, but why did it fall flat? Thinking back I think it was an uncompelling package, another “island paradise” with arbitrary block puzzles sprinkled in. More offensive was that damn backpack/watergun thing. Mario is about motion, and that “clean up the gunk” spray nozzle thing required me to keep Mario in place. What were they thinking?!? Seeing that nobody that I know liked it (and even reviewers retroactively dis that game), but it still netted a 92% on GameRankings, I certainly have to take all the hype for Galaxy with a grain of salt.

So Sunday I cracked Galaxy open and was drawn in. In a couple of good sessions I went through two full galaxies and probably about 25 stars. I’m a completionist so I went for all the secondary objectives first before moving to the next area.

Here are a pile of impressions:

• The Wii control scheme, for maybe the first time in my experience, isn’t annoying at all. You move Mario with the stick like you always did, but somehow the disconnected nunchuck feels better than a gamepad stick might, because it isn’t a big slab and can be tilted to help orient you to the action.
• Thank fucking god they ditched the “flip the wiimote to jump” thing that they toyed with a couple years ago. You just press the A button as you’d expect, which doesn’t give you the 1/4 second delay you get with gestural motion in most Wii games. That would have killed Mario.
  • This is hopefully a very good sign for Wii. It seems like when it was introduced, everyone out there was trying to use fancy whirls and flips to do mundane things. Tilt the wiimote to steer? Wow, dude, you just invented the joystick. Shake the wiimote to make Link attack? You just invented the button, asshole.

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This is, in many ways, a follow up to my last post. I can honestly say it’s great to see the blog begin to turn towards real discussion here. This is awesome. Thus for today’s topic I will forgo my intended topic and instead present the idea that refuses to die! The zombie of game design! Silent Protagonist I’m calling you out! Be prepared to receive a shovel to the head and a fistful of boomstick!

Kill the Silent Protagonist!

I am serious when I say that this is the worst idea that infects video games right now. It’s even worse than the plethora of half-hearted button combo cutscenes that have infected games since Resident Evil 4 and God of War. This evil, this disease, is the idea of a Silent Protagonist. Its symptoms are easy to diagnose: the protagonist never speaks and as seemingly important events fly by he/she says nothing further all the NPCs go to great lengths to talk around the player and advance the story almost inspite of him while he stands mute. It appears as a terrible, horrific, mark upon otherwise good or even great games. Half-Life 2 and Dragon Quest 8 are perfect high profile examples in people’s recent memories.

I understand the rationale: Because the Protagonist never speaks the player‘s immersion is never broken. The player can believe that they really are the protagonist!

I just can’t buy that… it destroys storytelling. Imagine a movie where the main character never talks? Frankly if it was actually a compelling idea Hollywood would be using it. They may recycle a lot but they’re not stupid. It is the realm of perhaps one great art movie and nothing more. Or ask yourself, were the Choose Your Own Adventure books the height of good writing? (more…)

Quick recap of what I played through this weekend.

Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

The Good:

• Great level design that effectively ramps the challenge throughout the game without becoming frustrating.
• Rewarding firefights that give you the immediate gratification of bolts and bits flying out everywhere, then the deferred gratification of weapon upgrades.
• Satisfying story that reveals a nice bit of back-story that none of the other Ratchet and Clank games have revealed.

The Bad:

• I ran in to two irritating bugs. If you go about halfway through the arena rounds and then decide to leave and go to a different planet, well, the game doesn’t much like that and asserts out in a non-graceful way. The second one isn’t as easy to find, but with my luck, I found it right as I finished a difficult fight. Jumping in to corners in some geometry seems to throw you in to a hole that you can’t get out of and stops the game world from rendering anything but the skybox.
• The weapon levels didn’t seem to have as much interesting variation as in older versions. By that I mean (and this could just be bad memory), it seemed like every few levels in Deadlocked or Up Your Arsenal, you’d get a bigger spray effect, or ricocheting bullets, without having to do anything special, I didn’t notice the bigger effects until reaching max level with the weapons. (more…)

Today I want to address one of greatest myths in the gaming industry: the assertion that freedom = immersion. Specifically I’ll focus on storytelling and cutscenes here… There are some lessons that can be carried into gameplay to be certain, but lets be clear that this is not my point.

You see, at times I have heard put forth within these very walls, the idea that cutscenes are bad and that storytelling should always be done in-game. Let me state my thesis bluntly: This is wrong. In fact, I will even argue that, when used properly, a good cutscene is more immersive than in game cinematics!

There are two schools of thought in storytelling:

1. The player plays a character. You play “Link” and there are important points where the character into whose shoes you’re stepping gets to express themselves. For example, this is when you see Midna begin to actually grow to like Link… It’s very classic storytelling.
2. The character is the player. You are “Gordon Freeman” and things happen to you as if you were the character, where your reactions are his. This shares much in common with improv theater.

Now “classic storytelling” is good, we know it is… It’s essentially been refined since the dawn of mankind. Of course there’s good and bad storytelling, and it won’t appeal to everyone, but when done well it’s strong, compelling, and doable. (And then there’s Metal Gear Solid… wtf?)

However, in what should come as little surprise, improv theater sucks when you have unwilling participants. But what throws me is why developers think that the player would (and should!) play along… Frankly, the overwhelming majority of players are unwilling participants. This is even true of gamers like me with a strong appreciation for story (in games or any format). Imagine, if you will, a band of merry stage actors with excellent improvisational skills. Now imagine a stereotypical Halo player hopping up onstage along with them. Seriously… just imagine it… Go ahead, I’ll wait…

…wow…

…omg…

…ok, yeah, that… that wasn’t cool. (more…)

Lately my wife has been playing MySims on the Wii. This game is best described as The Sims without the personal hygiene and a dash of Animal Crossing… Or actually a whole dumptruck load of Animal Crossing, where the truck in question has balloons and hearts and stars painted on the side.

The balance of building stuff instead of managing deep relationships led to lower reviews of MySims, but that’s fine, it’s what my wife always hated about the original. She wanted less of the voyeurism and more opportunities to build her house. (Women seem to dig building stuff, n’est pas?). This game not only let you decorate your pad, but build furniture and decorate them with standard carpentry hardware like anger and puppies.

Anyway, she threw herself headlong into it, playing several hours a day. She can obsess over certain tites (LOTRO being the most recent), so I expected the romance to last a week, at least. Three days later I noticed she wasn’t playing, so I asked why. Apparently, the town she was sprucing up had different sectors in it that needed exploring, like desert and forest and caves (no word on the lava-with-mine-cart sector). Each section had places that you could build houses for once you attracted a character to come to town. The reason she stopped, however, was that the town had a star rating that went up as you progressed through the game. Once you reached five stars, no matter what your plans were, the game “ended”, with credits and the whole deal. (more…)

Like many of the people here at Surreal I am a shooter fan at heart. I have played almost every FPS and Third Person Shooter to come out for the XBOX and the XBOX 360. Unlike Peter, Jim and others I didn’t grow up during the days of Quake. I played my share of Doom II and Marathon, but my days were spent playing GoldenEye and Perfect Dark for the Nintendo 64 (with a controller).

I have been a console shooter for as long as I can remember. I have logged enough hours over XBOX Live playing Halo 2, Gears of War and every other shooter to call my XBOX my “mistress”. It is my opinion that the peripheral that a player uses is not what makes them twitchy. You are either a “twitch gamer”, someone with lighting quick reflexes and great reaction times, or you are not.

I consider myself a “twitch gamer” so much so in-fact that when I play Halo or Gears I will actually expose myself for you to shoot at, counting on the fact that I will be able to kill you before you can shoot again. I have spent all my time playing shooters with a controller. I have trained myself to be fast and accurate with my thumbs. I play with very high sensitivity and have great control. The high sensitivity allows me to turn fast and being a twitch gamer I am able to keep my accuracy. Sure mouse and keyboard players are fast, but they can’t even accept the possibility that a controller is competitive. To them a controller is inferior.

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Ragnarok is upon us! Yes, the great battle that has been foretold by all the oracles of Hype and Providence: Guitar Hero III vs Rock Band!! The sky itself will be ripped asunder as… right. And so on– you get it.

People have been playing Guitar Hero for a while now. Some people are good at it. Less people are very good. Then you have those that have surpassed mortal bounds. You know at least one of them, right? Those face melting bastards that can chew through Jordan on expert, blindfolded, with one hand tied around your mom. What challenge could Guitar Hero III possibly throw at them?

Well how about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_znMI5hRxKY

Madness, you say? Sparta, even? Well what about Guitar Hero’s elder sister, Dance Dance Revolution! If foot-flavored insanity is more your style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dodMPp7XAyI

Maybe you’re more the galaga, Space Invaders type? A little top down space shooting to calm you at night before you sleep? Or maybe this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP-mePr1-ZQ (more…)

Ah Peter… I see you like making a statement. Awesome, this blog is a mix of all our opinions, and you’ve done a good job of backing up your own point of view. I’m not particularly suprised about your reaction to Halo’s health mechanics though… You’re an old-school online gamer, forged in the searing online fires of Mount Quake.

In contrast, as I’ve stated before, I like to play shooters (starting with Doom and its awesome shotgun) balls-out fearless, working out interesting ways to leap into the fray and rely on guts and skill to get the job done. Sure I like sessions of strategy too, but there are times where I just enjoy acting like a hero and being rewarded as such. I don’t even mind getting mowed down in tragic fashion if it’s due to my bravado. Such an approach does play havoc with my survivability in certain online contests (notably against Mr. Carlson), but I have fun doing it nonetheless.

The classic 100% health model, however, played a bit at odds with my play style. For me, each room or area of Doom is a fairly self-contained challenge, but upon completion I might have lower health than is practical to move onto the next session and still survive… you can’t always rely on the placement of health kits to get you back up to snuff. I’d often load up a save and try to get through that area with more health. This honed my skill and let me practice new ways of clearing a room, but as time went on, I found myself starting to play the game very “safe”… luring enemies around corners, slowly harassing opponents and so on. Doom suddenly became a very slow game to me. I enjoy tactical exercises like Rainbow Six as much as the next guy, but it wasn’t what I was looking for in a classic action shooter. (more…)

There, I said it. And believe me, I understand that when you say something like that, you’d damn well better mean it, and back it up, because I’m just begging to be called bitter, reactionary. I just want to hate what everybody else loves. I am small-minded and I should just get over it.

But that’s not the case. I popped Halo 3 into my 360 fully expecting to love it and then I just… didn’t.

I am an avid FPS gamer, coming from the Doom tradition and yes, from the PC tradition. I love to bust in, guns blazing, reaction speed amped up to max, in the zone, a God of destruction. I’m looking for that same forced brain overclock that Geometry Wars provided, or Tetris Attack, or Soul Calibur. I recently got that fix playing BioShock and I was hungrily anticipating it from Halo 3.

But Halo 3 smacked me down, with shields. Pat Lipo will have me believe that Halo’s shield system enables me to perform heroic acts! Because I don’t have to worry about health, I can leap into the fray and be the demon that deep inside I know I am. But, for me at least, that’s not the case at all. Every time I start having fun, Halo holds up a little Stop sign, “Whoa there buddy! Sure you’re having fun now, but hiding behind a rock is fun too! Why not take a breather?” I can’t make my way through the furious battle over to that health pack and continue the carnage. I can’t load up on first aid kits and burn through them in a glorious rampage. I have to go and hide. Rampage for 15 seconds then hide and wait. I’m not a hero, I’m a huge fucking pussy. (more…)